The death of Cato

The Death of Cato, painted around 1650, depicts the Roman senator's legendary suicide after Caesar's victory at Thapsus — one of the great exempla virtutis of classical antiquity. Cato's death, an act of principled resistance to tyranny, carried powerful political overtones in Counter-Reformation Italy, where the subject could be read as both classical history and contemporary allegory. Matthias Stom was a Dutch-born painter who spent virtually his entire working life in Italy, absorbing the Caravaggist tradition in Rome before settling permanently in Sicily around 1630.

The self-inflicted wound is rendered with unflinching Caravaggist realism, the strong light picking out the dramatic gestures and agonized expression. Stom applies his biblical-narrative technique to a classical subject with equal dramatic conviction.